A fantasia re-imagining of modern Beijing, "RMB City" is the latest Second Life-based art project from my friend China Tracy (nice profile of the real world artist in W Magazine here.) Since conception, it's evolved from a video prototype to a construction site in Second Life to a real world book... and now, to a truck container outside a top Miami Beach art gallery. This was last week at Art Basel Miami, a bacchanal for elite collectors-- or as the Times succinctly put it, "An Art Costco for Billionaires". Wearing hardhats, China and her team set up in a crate outside Vitamin Creative Space, acting like real estate developers for their imaginary metropolis. (Here's a write-up from the Miami Herald, though the author is unclear on China's gender.) Her blog has a series of photos from the scene, including those featured in this post.
Anyone who's been to Miami Beach can guess the layers of wit at play here: already a fantastic strip of unreal buildings inhabited by pan-sexual, hyper-glamorous (and often surgically enhanced) denizens, Miami is only slightly less fantastic than Second Life. And last week, thousands were there to spend immense amounts of real wealth on conceptual art-- including property in a city which doesn't exist. When it comes to mixed reality events, this is probably the closest merger of the virtual and the real you'll ever see.
Comments